William Lloyd Garrison Part 6

THE ABOLITIONIST!

That infamous foreign scoundrel, THOMPSON, will hold forth this afternoon at the Liberator office. No. 48 Was.h.i.+ngton street. The present is a fair opportunity for the friends of the Union to snake Thompson out! It will be a contest between the Abolitionists and the friends of the Union. A purse of $100 has been raised by a number of patriotic citizens to reward the individual who shall first lay violent hands on Thompson, so that he may be brought to the tar-kettle before dark. Friends of the Union, be vigilant!

Boston, Wednesday, 12 o'clock.

That Wednesday forenoon Garrison spent at the anti-slavery office, little dreaming of the peril which was to overtake him in that very spot in the afternoon. He went home to an early dinner, since his wife was a member of the society, and he himself was set down for an address. As he wended his way homeward, Mischief and her gang were afoot distributing the aforesaid handbills "in the insurance offices, the reading-rooms, all along State street, in the hotels, bar-rooms, etc.," and scattering it "among mechanics at the North End, who were mightily taken with it." Garrison returned about a half hour before the time appointed for the meeting. He found a small crowd of about a hundred individuals collected in front of the building where the hall was situated, and on ascending to the hall more of the same sort, mostly young men, choking the access to it. They were noisy, and Garrison pushed his way through them with difficulty. As he entered the place of meeting and took his seat among the ladies, twenty had already arrived, the gang of young rowdies recognized him and evinced this by the exclamation: "That's Garrison!" The full significance of the crowd just without the hall did not seem to have occurred to the man whom they had identified. He did not know that they were the foam blown from the mouth of a great mob at the moment filling the streets in the neighborhood of the building where he sat with such serenity of spirit. His wife who had followed him from their home saw what Garrison did not see. The crowd of a hundred had swelled to thousands. It lay in a huge irregular cross, jammed in between the buildings on Was.h.i.+ngton street, the head lowering in front of the anti-slavery office, the foot reaching to the site where stood Joy building, now occupied by the Rogers, the right arm stretching along Court street to the Court House, and the left encircling the old State House, City Hall and Post-office then, in a gigantic embrace. All hope of urging her way through that dense ma.s.s was abandoned by Mrs. Garrison, and a friend, Mr. John E. Fuller, escorted her to his home, where she pa.s.sed the night.

Meantime the atmosphere upstairs at the hall began to betoken a fast approaching storm. The noises ominously increased on the landing just outside. The door of the hall was swung wide open and the entrance filled with rioters. Garrison, all unconscious of danger, walked over to these persons and remonstrated in his grave way with them in regard to the disturbance which they were producing, winding up with a characteristic bit of pleasantry: "Gentlemen," said he, "perhaps you are not aware that this is a meeting of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society, called and intended exclusively for ladies, and those only who have been invited to address them. Understanding this fact you will not be so rude and indecorous as to thrust your presence upon this meeting." But he added, "If, gentlemen, any of you are ladies in disguise-why only apprise me of the fact, give me your names, and I will introduce you to the rest of your s.e.x, and you can take seats among them accordingly." The power of benignity over malignity lasted a few moments after this little speech, when the situation changed rapidly from bad to worse. "The tumult continually increased," says an eye-witness, "with horrible execrations, howling, stamping, and finally shrieking with rage. They seemed not to dare to enter, notwithstanding their fury, but mounted on each other's shoulders, so that a row of hostile heads appeared over the slight part.i.tion, of half the height of the wall which divides the society's rooms from the landing place. We requested them to allow the door to be shut; but they could not decide as to whether the request should be granted, and the door was opened and shut with violence, till it hung useless from its hinges."

Garrison thinking that his absence might quiet these perturbed spirits and so enable the ladies to hold their meeting without further molestation volunteered at this juncture to the president of the society to retire from the hall unless she desired him to remain. She did not wish him to stay but urged him to go at once not only for the peace of the meeting but for his own safety. Garrison thereupon left the hall meaning at the time to leave the building as well, but egress by the way of the landing and the stairs, he directly perceived was impossible, and did what seemed the next best thing, entered the anti-slavery office, separated from the hall by a board part.i.tion. Charles C. Burleigh accompanied him within this retreat. The door between the hall and the office was securely locked, and Garrison with that marvelous serenity of mind, which was a part of him, busied himself immediately with writing to a friend an account of the scenes which were enacting in the next room.

The tempest had begun in the streets also. The mob from its five thousand throats were howling "Thompson! Thompson!" The mayor of the city, Theodore Lyman, appeared upon the scene, and announced to the gentlemen of property and standing, who were thus exercising their vocal organs, that Mr. Thompson was not at the meeting, was not in the city. But the mayor was a modern Canute before the sea of human pa.s.sion, which was rus.h.i.+ng in over law and authority. He besought the rioters to disperse, but he might as well have besought the waves breaking on Nastasket Beach to disperse. Higher, higher rose the voices; fiercer, fiercer waxed the mult.i.tude; more and more frightful became the uproar. The long-pent-up excitement of the city and its hatred of Abolitionists had broken loose at last and the deluge had come. The mayor tossed upon the human inundation as a twig on a mountain stream, and with him for the nonce struggled helplessly the police power of the town also.

Upstairs in the hall the society and its president are quite as powerless as the mayor and the police below. Miss Mary S. Parker, the president, is struggling with the customary opening exercises. She has called the meeting to order, read to the ladies some pa.s.sages from the Bible, and has lifted up her voice in prayer to the All Wise and Merciful One "for direction and succor, and the forgiveness of enemies and revilers." It is a wonderful scene, a marvelous example of Christian heroism, for in the midst of the hisses and threats and curses of the rioters, the prayer of the brave woman rose clear and untremulous. But now the rioters have thrown themselves against the part.i.tion between the landing-place and the hall. They are trying to break it down; now, they have partially succeeded. In another moment they have thrown themselves against the door of the office where Garrison is locked. The lower panel is dashed in. Through the opening they have caught sight of their object, Garrison, serenely writing at his desk. "There he is! That's Garrison! Out with the scoundrel!" and other such words of recognition and execration, burst from one and another of the mob. The shattering of the part.i.tion, the noise of splitting and ripping boards, the sharp crash caused by the s.h.i.+vering of the office door, the loud and angry outcries of the rioters warn the serene occupant of the office that his position has become one of extreme peril. But he does not become excited. His composure does not forsake him. Instead of attempting to escape, he simply turns to his friend, Burleigh, with the words, "You may as well open the door, and let them come in and do their worst." But fortunately, Burleigh was in no such extremely non-resistant mood.

The advent of the mayor and the constables upon the scene at this point rescued Garrison from immediately falling into the hands of the mob, who were cleared out of the hall and from the stairway. Now the voice of the mayor was heard urging the ladies to go home as it was dangerous to remain; and now the voice of Maria Weston Chapman, replying: "If this is the last bulwark of freedom, we may as well die here as anywhere." The ladies finally decided to retire, and their exit diverted, while the operation lasted, the attention of the huge, cat-like creature from their object in the anti-slavery office. When the pa.s.sing of the ladies had ceased, the old fury of the mob against Garrison returned. "Out with him!" "Lynch him!" rose in wild uproar from thousands in the streets. But again the attention of the huge, cat-like creature was diverted from its object in the second story of the building before which it was las.h.i.+ng itself into frenzy. This time it was the anti-slavery sign which hung from the rooms of the society over the sidewalk. The mob had caught sight of it, and directly set up a yell for it. The sensation of utter helplessness in the presence of the mult.i.tude seemed at this juncture to return to the chief magistrate of the city. It was impossible to control the cataract-like pa.s.sions of the rioters. He heard their awful roar for the sign. The din had risen to terrific proportions. The thought of what might happen next appalled him. The mob might begin to bombard the sign with brickbats, and from the sign pa.s.s to the building, and from the building to the constables, and then-but the mayor glanced not beyond, for he had determined to appease the fury of the mob by throwing down to it the hateful sign. A constable detached it, and hurled it down to the rioters in the street. But by the act the mayor had signified that the rule of law had collapsed, and the rule of the mob had really begun. When the rioters had wreaked their wrath upon the emblem of freedom, they were in the mood for more violence. The appet.i.te for destruction, it was seen, had not been glutted; only whetted. Garrison's situation was now extremely critical. He could no longer remain where he was, for the mob would invade the building and hunt him like hounds from cellar to garret. He must leave the building without delay. To escape from the front was out of the question. A way of escape must, therefore, be found in the rear. All of these considerations the mayor and Garrison's friends urged upon him. The good man fell in with this counsel, and, with a faithful friend, proceeded to the rear of the building, where from a window he dropped to a shed, but in doing so was very nearly precipitated to the ground. After picking himself up he pa.s.sed into a carpenter's shop, meaning to let himself down into Wilson's Lane, now Devons.h.i.+re street, but the myriad-eyed mob, which was searching every portion of the building for their game, espied him at this point, and with that set up a great shout. The workmen came to the aid of the fugitive by closing the door of the carpenter's shop in the face of his pursuers. The situation seemed desperate. Retreat from the front was cut off; escape from the rear antic.i.p.ated and foiled. Garrison perceived the futility of any further attempts to elude the mob, and proposed in his calm way to deliver himself up to them. But his faithful Achates, John Reid Campbell, advised him that it was his duty to avoid the mob as long as it was possible to do so. Garrison thereupon made a final effort to get away. He retreated up stairs, where his friend and a lad got him into a corner of the room and tried to conceal his whereabouts by piling some boards in front of him. But, by that time, the rioters had entered the building, and within a few moments had broken into the room where Garrison was in hiding. They found Mr. Reid, and demanded of him where Garrison was. But Reid firmly refused to tell. They then led him to a window, and exhibited him to the mob in the Lane, advising them that it was not Garrison, but Garrison's and Thompson's friend, who knows where Garrison is, but refuses to tell. A shout of fierce exultation from below greeted this announcement. Almost immediately afterward, Garrison was discovered and dragged furiously to the window, with the intention of hurling him thence to the pavement. Some of the rioters were for doing this, while others were for milder measures. "Don't let us kill him outright!" they begged. So his persecutors relented, coiled a rope around his body instead, and bade him descend to the street. The great man was never greater than at that moment. With extraordinary meekness and benignity he saluted his enemies in the street. From the window he bowed to the mult.i.tude who were thirsting for his destruction, requesting them to wait patiently, for he was coming to them. Then he stepped intrepidly down the ladder raised for the purpose, and into the seething sea of human pa.s.sion.

Garrison must now have been speedily torn to pieces had he not been quickly seized by two or three powerful men, who were determined to save him from falling into the hands of the mob. They were men of great muscular strength, but the muscular strength of two or three giants would have proven utterly unequal to the rescue, and this Mr. Garrison's deliverers evidently appreciated. For while they employed their powerful arms, they also employed stratagem as well to effect their purpose. They shouted anon as they fought their way through the excited throng, "He is an American! He shan't be hurt!" and other such words which divided the mind of the mob, arousing among some sympathy for the good man. By this means he was with difficulty got out of Wilson's lane into State street, in the rear of the old State House. The champion was now on historic ground, ground consecrated by the blood of Crispus Attucks and his fellow-martyrs sixty-five years before. His hat was lost, much of his clothing was stripped from his body, he was without his customary gla.s.ses, and was therefore practically blind. He could hear the awful clamor, the mighty uproar of the mob, but he could not distinguish them one from another, friend from foe. Nevertheless he "walked with head erect, calm countenance flas.h.i.+ng eyes like a martyr going to the stake, full of faith and manly hope" according to the testimony of an eye-witness. Garrison himself has thrown light on the state of his mind during the ordeal. "The promises of G.o.d," he afterward remembered, sustained his soul, "so that it was not only divested of fear, but ready to sing aloud for joy."

The news now reached the ears of the mayor that Garrison was in the hands of the mob. Thereupon the feeble but kindly magistrate began to act afresh the role of the twig in the mountain stream. He and his constables struggled helplessly in the human current rus.h.i.+ng and raging around City Hall, the head and seat of munic.i.p.al law and authority. Without the aid of private citizens Garrison must inevitably have perished in the commotions which presently reached their climax in violence and terror. He was in the rear of City Hall when the mayor caught up to him and his would-be rescuers. The mayor perceived the extremity of the situation, and said to the Faneuil Hall giants who had hold of Garrison, "Take him into my office," which was altogether more easily said than done. For the rioters have raised the cry "to the Frog Pond with him!" Which order will be carried out, that of the magistrate or that of the mob?

These were horrible moments while the two hung trembling in the balance. But other private citizens coming to the a.s.sistance of the mayor struck the scales for the moment in his favor, and Garrison was finally hustled, and thrust by main force into the south door of the City Hall and carried up to the mayor's room. But the mob had immediately effected an entrance into the building through the north door and filled the lower hall. The mayor now addressed the pack, strove manfully in his feeble way to prevail upon the human wolves to observe order, to sustain the law and the honor of the city, he even intimated to them that he was ready to lay down his life on the spot to maintain the law and preserve order. Then he got out on the ledge over the south door and spoke in a similar strain to the mob on the street. But alas! he knew not the secret for reversing the Circean spell by which gentlemen of property and standing in the community had been suddenly transformed into a wolfish rabble.

The increasing tumult without soon warned the authorities that what advantage the mayor may have obtained in the contest with the mob was only temporary and that their position was momentarily becoming more perilous and less tenable. It was impossible to say to what extreme of violence a mult.i.tude so infuriated would not go to get their prey. It seemed to the now thoroughly alarmed mayor that the mob might in their frenzy attack the City Hall to effect their purpose. There was one building in the city, which the guardians of the law evidently agreed could resist the rage of the populace, and that building was the jail. To this last stronghold of Puritan civilization the authorities and the powers that were, fell back as a dernier resort to save Garrison's life. But even in this utmost pitch and extremity, when law was trampled in the streets, when authority was a reed shaken in a storm, when anarchy had drowned order in the bosom of the town, the Anglo-Saxon pa.s.sion for legal forms a.s.serted itself. The good man, hunted for his life, must forsooth be got into the only refuge which promised him security from his pursuers by a regular judicial commitment as a disturber of the peace. Is there anything at once so pathetic and farcical in the Universal history of mobs?

Pathetic and farcical to be sure, but it was also well meant, and therefore we will not stop to quarrel with men who were equal to the perpetration of a legal fiction so full of the comedy and tragedy of civilized society. But enough-the munic.i.p.al wiseacres having put their heads together and evolved the brilliant plan of committing the prophet as a disturber of the peace, immediately set about its execution, which developed in the sequence into a bird of altogether another color. For a more perilous and desperate device to preserve Garrison's life could not well have been hit upon. How was he ever to be got out of the building and through that sea of ferocious faces surging and foaming around it. First then by disguising his ident.i.ty by sundry changes in his apparel. He obtained a pair of trousers from one kindly soul, another gave him a coat, a third lent him a stock, a fourth furnished him a cap. A hack was summoned and stationed at the south door, a posse of constables drew up and made an open way from the door to it. Another hack was placed in readiness at the north door. The hack at the south door was only a ruse to throw the mob off the scent of their prey, while he was got out of the north door and smuggled into the other hack. Up to this point, the plan worked well, but the instant after Garrison had been smuggled into the hack he was identified by the mob, and then ensued a scene which defies description; no writer however skillful, may hope to reproduce it. The rioters rushed madly upon the vehicle with the cry: "Cut the traces! Cut the reins!" They flung themselves upon the horses, hung upon the wheels, dashed open the doors, the driver the while belaboring their heads right and left with a powerful whip, which he also laid vigorously on the backs of his horses. For a moment it looked as if a catastrophe was unavoidable, but the next saw the startled horses plunging at break-neck speed with the hack up Court street and the mob pursuing it with yells of baffled rage. Then began a thrilling, a tremendous race for life and Leverett street jail. The vehicle flew along Court street to Bodoin square, but the rioters, with fell purpose flew hardly less swiftly in its track. Indeed the pursuit of the pack was so close that the hackman did not dare to drive directly to the jail but reached it by a detour through Cambridge and Blossom streets. Even then the mob pressed upon the heels of the horses as they drew up before the portals of the old prison, which shut not an instant too soon upon the editor of the Liberator, who was saved from a frightful fate to use a Biblical phrase but by the skin of his teeth.

Here the reformer safe from the wrath of his foes, was locked in a cell; and here, during the evening, with no abatement of his customary cheerfulness and serenity of spirit, he received several of his anxious friends, Whittier among them, whom through the grated bars he playfully accosted thus: "You see my accommodations are so limited, that I cannot ask you to spend the night with me." That night in his prison cell, and on his rude prison bed, he slept the sleep of the just man, sweet and long:

"When peace within the bosom reigns, And conscience gives th' approving voice; Though bound the human form in chains.

Yet can the soul aloud rejoice.

"'Tis true, my footsteps are confined- I cannot range beyond this cell- But what can circ.u.mscribe my mind, To chain the winds attempt as well!"

The above stanzas he wrote the next morning on the walls of his cell. Besides this one he made two other inscriptions there, to stand as memorabilia of the black drama enacted in Boston on the afternoon of October 21, 1835.

After being put through the solemn farce of an examination in a court, extemporized in the jail, Garrison was discharged from arrest as a disturber of the peace! But the authorities, dreading a repet.i.tion of the scenes of the day before, prayed him to leave the city for a few days, which he did, a deputy sheriff driving him to Canton, where he boarded the train from Boston to Providence, containing his wife, and together they went thence to her father's at Brooklyn, Conn. The apprehensions of the authorities in respect of the danger of a fresh attack upon him were unquestionably well founded, inasmuch as diligent search was made for him in all of the outgoing stages and cars from the city that morning.

In this wise did pro-slavery, patriotic Boston translate into works her sympathy for the South.

CHAPTER XII.

FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.

The results of the storm became immediately manifest in several ways. Such a commotion did not leave things in precisely the state in which they were on the morning of the memorable day on which it struck the city. The moral landscape and geography of the community had sensibly changed at its close. The full extent of the alteration wrought could not at once be seen, nor was it at once felt. But that there were deep and abiding changes made by it in the court of public opinion in Boston and Ma.s.sachusetts on the subject of slavery there is little doubt. It disgusted and alarmed many individuals who had hitherto acted in unison with the social, business, and political elements, which were at the bottom of the riot. Francis Jackson, for instance, had been one of the fifteen hundred signers of the call for the great Faneuil Hall meeting of the 21st of August. But on the afternoon of the 21st of October he threw his house open to the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society, after its meeting had been broken up by the mob. It seemed to him then that it was no longer a mere struggle for the freedom of the slave, but for the right of free speech and free discussion as well. Dr. Henry I. Bowditch, a young man, in 1835, eminent professor and physician subsequently, dates from that afternoon of mob violence his conversion to Abolitionism. In that selfsame hour seeds of resistance to slavery were sown in two minds of the first order in the city and State. Wendell Phillips was a spectator in the streets that day, and the father of Charles Sumner, the sheriff at the time, fought bravely to save Garrison from falling into the hands of the mob. The great riot gave those young men their first summons to enter the service of freedom. It was not long afterward probably that they both began to read the Liberator. From that event many intelligent and conservative people a.s.sociated slavery with lynch law and outrage upon the rights of free speech and popular a.s.sembly.

This anti-slavery reaction of the community received practical demonstration in the immediate increase of subscribers to the Liberator. Twelve new names were added to the subscription list in one day. It received significant ill.u.s.tration also in Garrison's nomination to the legislature. In this way did between seventy and eighty citizens testify their sympathy for him and their reprobation of mob rule. In yet another way was its influence felt, and this was in the renewed zeal and activity which it instantly produced on the part of the Abolitionists themselves. It operated upon the movement as a powerful stimulus to fresh sacrifices and unwearied exertions. George W. Benson, Garrison's brother-in-law, led off bravely in this respect, as the following extract from a letter written by him in Boston, two days after the riot, to Garrison, at Brooklyn, well ill.u.s.trates. He had come up to the city from Providence the night before, in quest of his sister and her husband. Not finding them, he turned to the cause which had been so ruthlessly attacked, and this is the sort of care which he bestowed upon it. He got Burleigh to write a general relation of the mob for publication in the Liberator, and Whittier to indite another, with an appeal to the public, the same to be published immediately, and of which he ordered three thousand copies for himself.

"I further ordered," he writes, "one thousand copies of A. Grimke's letter, with your introductory remarks, and your address published in the Liberator several weeks since, with your name appended, and Whittier's poetry on the times, in a pamphlet form. I urged all our friends to redouble their exertions. They seemed well disposed to accept the advice, as nothing will now avail but thorough measures. Liberty or Death!"

This is a fair specimen of the indomitable, indefatigable spirit which was born of the attempt to put Abolitionism down by lawlessness and violence. Indeed, the "Broad-Cloth Mob," viewed in the light of the important consequences which followed it, was equal to a hundred anti-slavery meetings, or a dozen issues of the Liberator.

It is a curious and remarkable circ.u.mstance that, on the very day of the Boston mob, there occurred one in Utica, N.Y., which was followed by somewhat similar results. An anti-slavery convention was attacked and broken up by a mob of "gentlemen of property and standing in the community," under the active leaders.h.i.+p of a member of Congress. Here there was an apparent defeat for the Abolitionists, but the consequences which followed the outrage proved it a blessing in disguise. For the cause made many gains thereby, and conspicuously among them was Gerritt Smith, ever afterward one of its most eloquent and munificent supporters. If anti-slavery meetings made converts by tens, anti-slavery mobs made them by hundreds. The enemies of freedom builded better than they knew or intended, and Garrison had the weightiest of reasons for feeling thankful to them for the involuntary, yet vast aid and comfort which their pro-slavery virulence and violence were bringing him and the anti-slavery movement throughout the free States. Example: in 1835-36, the great mob year, as many as three hundred and twenty-eight societies were organized in the North for the immediate abolition of slavery.

The mob did likewise help towards a satisfactory solution of the riddle propounded by Garrison: "Shall the Liberator die?" The fresh access of anti-slavery strength, both in respect of zeal and numbers, begotten by it, exerted no slight influence on the longevity of the Liberator. Poor the paper continued, and embarra.s.sed the editor for many a month thereafter, but as an anti-slavery instrument its survival may be said from that proceeding to have become a necessity. To allow the Liberator to die at this juncture would have been such a confession of having been put down, such an ignominious surrender to the mobocrats as the Abolitionists of Boston would have scorned to make. "I trust," wrote Samuel E. Sewall, "there will not be even one week's interruption in the publication of the Liberator." Ex uno disce omnes. He but voiced the sentiment of the editor's disciples and a.s.sociates in the city, in the State, and in New England as well.

Besides these larger consequences there were others of a more personal and less welcome character. The individual suffers but the cause goes forward. Property-holders in Boston after the riot were not at all disposed to incur the risk of renting property to such disturbers of the peace as Garrison and the Liberator. The owner of his home on Brighton street was thrown into such alarm for the safety of his property, if Garrison continued to occupy it, that he requested the cancellation of the lease and the vacation of the premises. Garrison and his friends, all things considered, decided that it was the part of wisdom to accede to the request-although this breaking up of his home was a sore trial to the young husband in more ways than one.

The landlord of the building where was located the Liberator office promptly notified the publishers to remove the paper not many mornings after the mob. This was particularly hard luck, inasmuch as the most dilligent quest for another local habitation for the paper, failed of success. No one was willing to imperil his property by letting a part of it to such a popularly odious enterprise. So that not only had the household furniture of the editor to be stored, but the office effects of the paper as well. The inextinguishable pluck and zeal of Garrison and his Boston coadjutors never showed to better advantage than when without a place to print the Liberator, the paper was "set up in driblets" in other offices at extraordinary expense, and sent out week after week to tell the tale of the mob, and to preach with undiminished power the gospel of universal emanc.i.p.ation.

But more afflictive to the feelings of the reformer than the loss of his home, or that of the office of the Liberator, was the loss of his friend, George Thompson. It seemed to him when the English orator departed that "the paragon of modern eloquence," and "the benefactor of two nations," had left these sh.o.r.es. Garrison's grief was as poignant as his humiliation was painful. George Thompson had come hither only as a friend of America, and America had pursued him with the most relentless malice. The greatest precautions were taken after the "Broadcloth Mob" to ensure his safety. The place of his concealment was kept a secret and committed only to a few tried friends. There is no doubt that had these precautions not been observed and his hiding place been discovered by the ruffians of the city, his life would have been attempted. Indeed it is almost as certain that had he ventured to show himself in public he would have been murdered in broad daylight in any of the large towns and cities of Ma.s.sachusetts. His mission was clearly at an end unless he was determined to invite martyrdom. In these circ.u.mstances there was nothing to do but to smuggle him out of the country at the first opportunity. On Sunday, November 8, the anxiously looked-for moment came when George Thompson was put upon a packet, in which he sailed for St. Johns, New Brunswick, whence he subsequently took pa.s.sage for England. Garrison was inconsolable. "Who now shall go forth to argue our cause in public," he sadly asked, "with subtle sophists and insolent scoffers?" little dreaming that there was then approaching him out of the all-hail hereafter a greater in these identical respects than George Thompson, indisputably great as he was.

It was a blessed refuge to Garrison, the Benson homestead of Brooklyn, termed Friends.h.i.+p's Valley. Hunted as a partridge by his enemies here he found the quiet, and sympathy, and the right royal welcome and affection for which his heart panted amidst the dust, and din, and dangers of the crusade against slavery. But grateful as were the domestic sweets of Friends.h.i.+p's Valley, his was altogether too militant and masterful a spirit to yield himself without a struggle to the repose which it offered. He did not at all relish the idea of being a forced exile from Boston, of being obliged to edit the Liberator at such long range. But his friends urged him to submit to the one, and do the other, both on grounds of economy and common prudence. He was almost super-anxious lest it be said that the fear of the mob drove him out of Boston, and that the fear of it kept him out. This super-anxiety in that regard his friends to a certain degree shared with him. It was a phase of Abolition grit. Danger attracted this new species of reformers as a magnet draws iron. Instead of running away from it, they were, with one accord, forever rus.h.i.+ng into it. And the leader in Brooklyn was for rus.h.i.+ng back to Boston, where, if one chanced to sow the wind in the morning, he might be morally certain of reaping the whirlwind in the afternoon.

Two weeks after he had been secretly conveyed to Canton by Deputy Sheriff Parkman, being the day of his discharge from Leverett street jail, he was back again in Boston. The popular excitement had subsided. He showed himself freely in the streets and was nowhere molested. One day, however, while at the anti-slavery office on Was.h.i.+ngton street, he witnessed what was perhaps a final manifestation of the cat-like spirit of the great mob. A procession pa.s.sed by with band and music, bearing aloft a large board on which were represented George Thompson and a black woman with this significant allusion to the riot, made as if addressed to himself by his dusky companion in disgrace: "When are we going to have another meeting, Brother Thompson?" The cat-like creature had lapsed into a playful mood, but its playfulness would have quickly given place to an altogether different fit did it but know that Garrison was watching it from the window of the very room where a few weeks before he had nearly fallen into its clutches.

Garrison remained in Boston two weeks, going about the city, wherever and whenever business or duty called him in a perfectly fearless way. He left on the afternoon of November 18th. On that same afternoon the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society held a memorable meeting at the house of Francis Jackson. It was then that Harriet Martineau, another foreign emissary, avowed her entire agreement with the principles of the Abolitionists, which subjected her to social ostracism, and to unlimited abuse from the pro-slavery press of the city.

The new hatred of slavery which the mob had aroused in Boston found heroic expression in a letter of Francis Jackson's replying to a vote of thanks of the Ma.s.sachusetts Anti-Slavery Society to him for his hospitality to the ladies after their meeting was broken up by the mob. Mr. Jackson in his answer points with emphasis to the fact that his hospitality had a double aim, one was the accommodation of the ladies, the other the preservation of the right of free discussion. In his regard a foundation principle of free inst.i.tutions had been a.s.sailed. "Happily," he shrewdly observed, "one point seems already to be gaining universal a.s.sent, that slavery cannot long survive free discussion. Hence the efforts of the friends, and apologists of slavery to break down this right. And hence the immense stake which the enemies of slavery hold, in behalf of freedom and mankind, in its preservation. The contest is, therefore, substantially between liberty and slavery.

"As slavery cannot exist with free discussion, so neither can liberty breathe without it. Losing this, we, too, shall be no longer free men indeed, but little, if at all, superior to the millions we now seek to emanc.i.p.ate." This apprehension and spirit of resistance, voiced by Francis Jackson, was Garrison's new ally, which, phoenix-like, was born out of the ashes of that terrific attempt of his enemies to effect his destruction, known as the "Broad-Cloth Mob."

CHAPTER XIII.

THE BAROMETER CONTINUES TO FALL.

Having made trial of the strong arm of the mob as an instrument for putting down the Abolitionists, and been quite confounded by its unexpected energy and unmanageableness, Boston was well disposed to lay the weapon aside as much too dangerous for use. For the wild-cat-like creature might take it into its head, when once it had got a taste of blood, to suppress some other isms in the community besides Abolitionism. No, no, the gentlemen of property and standing in the community had too much at stake to expose their property and their persons to the perils of any further experiments in that direction, even for the sake of expressing their sympathy for their dear brethren in the South, or of saving the dear Union into the bargain. Another method more in accord with the genius of their high state of civilization, they opined, might be invented to put the agitation and the agitators of the slavery question down. The politicians thereupon proceeded to make this perfectly wonderful invention. Not the strong arm of the mob, quoth these wiseacres, but the strong arm of the law it shall be. And the strong arm of the law they forthwith determined to make it.

Ma.s.sachusetts was hearkening with a sort of fascination to the song of the slave syren. And no wonder. For the song of the slave syren was swelling and clas.h.i.+ng the while with pa.s.sionate and imperious energy. South Carolina had led off in this kind of music. In December following the Boston mob Governor McDuffie, pitched the key of the Southern concert in his message to the legislature descriptive of anti-slavery publications, and denunciatory of the anti-slavery agitation. The Abolitionists were, to his mind, "enemies of the human race," and the movement for immediate emanc.i.p.ation ought to be made a felony punishable "by death without benefit of clergy." He boldly denied that slavery was a political evil, and vaunted it instead as "the corner stone of our republican edifice." The legislature upon the receipt of this extraordinary message proceeded to demand of the free States the suppression, by effective legislation, of anti-slavery societies and their incendiary publications. The burden of this demand was directly caught up by North Carolina, Alabama, Virginia, and Georgia. But there were some things which even a pro-slavery North could not do to oblige the South. Neither party, much as both desired it, dared to undertake the violation by law of the great right of free speech and of the freedom of the press. Not so, however, was it with sundry party leaders, notably the governors of New York and Ma.s.sachusetts, who were for trying the strong arm of the law as an instrument for suppressing Abolitionism. Edward Everett was so affected by the increasing Southern excitement and his fears for the safety of the dear Union that he must needs deliver himself in his annual message upon the Abolition agitation. He was of the opinion that the Abolitionists were guilty of an offence against Ma.s.sachusetts which might be "prosecuted as a misdemeanor at common law." He evidently did not consider that in the then present state of political parties and of public opinion any repressive legislation upon the subject could be got through the legislature, and hence the immense utility of the old machinery of the common law, as an instrument for putting down the agitation. But in order to get this machinery into operation, careful preparation was necessary. Proof must not be wanting as to the dangerous and unpatriotic character and tendency of the movement to be repressed. There should be the most authoritative utterance upon this point to warrant the effective intervention of the Courts and Grand Juries of the commonwealth in the prosecution of the Abolitionists, as disturbers of the peace. Ergo the Governor's deliverance in his annual message against them. Now, if the legislature could be brought to deliver itself in tones not less certain, the third coordinate branch of the State government might catch its cue and act with energy in suppressing the disturbers of the peace of the commonwealth and of the dear Union as well. This was the scheme, the conspiracy which was in a state of incubation in Ma.s.sachusetts in the year 1836. The pro-slavery portion of Governor Everett's message, together with the Southern demands for repressive legislation against the Abolitionists were referred to a joint legislative committee for consideration and report. The chairman of the committee was George Lunt, of Newburyport, a bitter pro-slavery politician, who saw no sign, received no light which did not come out of the South.

The Abolitionists perceived the gravity of the new danger which threatened them, and rallied promptly to avert it. They shrewdly guessed that the object of the committee would not be the enactment of any new law against themselves but the adoption of condemnatory resolutions instead. This course they rightly dreaded more than the other, and to defeat it the managers of the Ma.s.sachusetts Anti-slavery Society requested a public hearing of the committee, which was granted. On March 4th Garrison and many of the anti-slavery leaders appeared before the committee, with a carefully planned programme of procedure. To each of the selected speakers was a.s.signed a distinct phase of the great subject of discussion before the committee. Samuel J. May was appointed to open with an exposition of the anti-slavery movement and of the object and motives of its founders; Garrison to follow with an exhibition of the pacific character of the agitation as contained in official publications whereby forgiveness, submission, and non-resistance were steadily inculcated; Ellis Gray Loring was next to demonstrate the perfectly const.i.tutional character of the agitation. The Abolitionists had in no wise contravened the National or the State Const.i.tution, either in letter or spirit, and so on through the programme. It was thus that the Abolitionists dexterously killed two birds with one stone; for at the same time that they made their defence before the committee, they managed to present their cause to the attention of the public as well. Appearing before the committee to prevent hostile action on the part of the legislature against their movement, they skillfully turned the occasion into the most notable meeting for agitating the subject of slavery in the State during the year.

The pro-slavery malignity of the chairman helped not a little to bring this result to pa.s.s. He again and again interrupted the speakers with the greatest insolence of behavior. Garrison, for a wonder, was allowed to finish his remarks without interruption. Here is a specimen of the way in which Paul addressed himself to King Agrippa's master-public opinion:

"Sir," spoke he to the committee, "we loudly boast of our free country, and of the union of these States, yet I have no country! As a New Englander and as an Abolitionist I am excluded by a b.l.o.o.d.y proscription from one-half of the national territory, and so is every man who is known to regard slavery with abhorrence. Where is our Union? ... The right of free and safe locomotion from one part of the land to the other is denied to us, except on peril of our lives.... Therefore it is, I a.s.sert, that the Union is now virtually dissolved.... Look at McDuffie's sanguinary message! Read Calhoun's Report to the U.S. Senate, authorizing every postmaster in the South to plunder the mail of such Northern letters or newspapers as he may choose to think incendiary! Sir, the alternative presented to the people of New England is this: they must either submit to be gagged and fettered by Southern taskmasters, or labor unceasingly for the removal of slavery from our country."

This was a capital stroke, a bold and brilliant adaptation of the history of the times to the advancement of the anti-slavery movement in New England. Missing Garrison, the anger of the chairman fell upon Goodell and Prof. Follen, like a tiger's whelp. Follen was remarking upon the Faneuil Hall meeting, how it had rendered the Abolitionists odious in Boston, and how, in consequence, the mob had followed the meeting.

"Now, gentlemen," the great scholar continued, "may we most reasonably antic.i.p.ate that similar consequences would follow the expression by the legislature of a similar condemnation? Would not the mob again undertake to execute the informal sentence of the General Court? Would it not let loose again its bloodhounds upon us?"

At this point Mr. Lunt peremptorily stopped the speaker, exclaiming: